The Residence in Cairo was built during the time when the first Earl of Cromer was Consul General in Egypt.  Lord Cromer had arrived in Cairo as Sir Evelyn Baring in 1883 to become HM Agent, Minister Plenipotentiary and Consul General.  He moved into the Consulate, a large rambling house in poor condition, on the Rue Maghrabi.  By 1885 Baring was looking seriously for a plot of land on which to build more functional offices and accommodation.  He first considered surplus land adjacent to The English Church, which was bordered by busy roads.  But there was a considerably more attractive plot adjacent to the Nile inside a huge park, surrounded by high walls, between Ismailia Square and Kasr el Aini Hospital.  Garden City, so named in 1905, was chosen as the site for the new building.

The original plot of land covered the area which is now the Residence and garden (which extended then to the Nile’s east bank), with a road running between the plot and the adjacent one to the south, which is now the Embassy grounds.  The plot was purchased in 1890 for a total sum of £2,580 and work began on the Residence, which housed both the offices and living accommodation.  Work was completed in 1894.

In 1907 Lord Cromer was replaced by Sir Eldon Gorst, who arrived with 70 servants.  However, the house continued to provide accommodation for all personal, diplomatic and military staff, and later for Egyptian Offices as well.  As official work increased during the time of the next incumbent, Lord Kitchener, the main reception room, which was then the ballroom, had to be used as a waiting room.

By 1912 drawings had already been submitted to replace this room with a separate ballroom in a new building to the front, north side of the Residence.  The building was finished in 1913 and contained a wooden dance floor which was the first sprung floor in Africa.

The two marble lions either side of the entrance to the Residence were acquired by Lord Kitchener from the newly renovated Gezira Palace Hotel on Zamalek.  He refused to have his picture taken in the gardens unless he was given the two marble lions.  These had been in the garden since the time when the building had been one of the finest of the Khedive’s palaces.

The beginning of the First World War brought a change not only in person, but in title.  Lord Kitchener, as British Agent and Consul General, was replaced by Sir Henry MacMahon, who became High Commissioner.  During the war years the High Commissioner banned alcohol from his table, imitating Buckingham Palace.  Jones, the butler, offered guests only lemonade and barley water.  At that time, the grass in the garden was still expensively re-sown every year.  Nor did wartime austerity prevent Popinjay, Sir Reginald Wingate’s personal servant and golf caddy, from wearing his splendid blue and silver uniform.

The added workload produced by the First World War resulted in the need for more office space, so the new elegant ballroom was partitioned into small offices.  These continued to be used as offices after the war.  During the War the High Commissioner had to give up three of his private rooms and the halls in the Residence were again used as waiting rooms.  The men’s cloakroom was the Oriental Secretary’s room.  Almost all of the ground floor was thus used for official purposes.  (The Egyptian Foreign Ministry and the Arab Bureau were also functioning out of the Residence.)  This continually increasing need for more office space led to discussions about purchasing new buildings to accommodate the growing staff.  In 1914 the Romanians had begun constructing a single storey, starfish shaped building on the plot next to the Embassy to the south, which they abandoned before completion.  After lengthy correspondence, between Sir Henry MacMahon, the Foreign Office and the Treasury, the plot was bought from Charles Bacos for 36,375LE in 1916.  The road between the two plots was also purchased.

Sir Reginald Wingate moved into the Residence replacing Sir Henry MacMahon in 1917, but only stayed for two years.  He was replaced by Field Marshal Lord Allenby in 1919 and the hocks and burgundies were restored to the dining table. Lord Allenby was known for his pet marabou stork, which jealously kept women and children away from his master.

Lord Allenby argued strongly with London that an extension to the Residence was the best way to produce the much needed extra office space.  The Treasury replied that it could not understand why it was necessary for the Residence to house both the Egyptian Foreign Ministry and the Arab Bureau as well.  The Egyptian Offices vacated the Residence and Allenby continued the discussions for enlargement of the current building.  Plans were drawn by the architect Richard James Allison which appeared in Building News in 1921.  However, in 1922 the Treasury decided that the cost of adding to the existing building was too high, and that a more economical way of providing offices was by converting the unfinished Romanian building on the acquired adjacent plot of land. The money for the conversion was agreed at £11,575, and despite problems with basement flooding in 1925, work was completed quickly.

The Residence was still used by the High Commissioner and political officers until increasing staff numbers led to a new separate, single storey chancery building being added in 1937 to the Bacos plot.  This new building also enabled the Kitchener ballroom to be restored and reinstated.

During the Second World War Sir Miles Lampson, later Lord Killearn, and his young second wife Jaqueline entertained all the main players in the Residence.  In 1942 they vacated their air-cooled bedroom for the Prime Minister for a week while he viewed the war in the Middle East at first hand.  Later Churchill wrote to thank the Lampsons for their ‘princely hospitality’. The Prime Minister was to visit Egypt again but did not stay in the Residence, instead taking a villa near the pyramids.  During his stay in 1942 the list of visitors included King Farouk, Kermit Roosevelt, General de Gaulle, Anthony Eden, Generals Alexander, Montgomery, Smuts, Spears, Auchinleck, Wavell and more, as well as Noel Coward, Freya Stark, Cecil Beaton and Evelyn Waugh.

In 1954 Nasser’s government purchased a strip of land from the bottom of the garden, to allow the road by the side of the Nile to continue along its banks, instead of curving inland around the British land.  The land was bought for LE 300,000 (about £20 million at 2000 prices).  Probably as a result of this payment, there was money available to replace the two buildings on the original Bacos plot with the present Embassy, which was completed in 1955.

1956 brought the Suez crisis and Sir Humphrey Trevelyan reduced the Embassy personnel to a hard core on 28 October.  The Egyptians broke off relations on 1 November, and at noon the gates of the Embassy were closed by the Egyptians; no-one was allowed in or out, the telephones and electricity were cut off and exit permits were refused to all British subjects.  The Swiss Chargé d’Affaires, Monsieur Guy Keller now looked after British interest in Egypt.

On 2 November a Swiss team arrived from Sudan to take charge of British and French interests.  They were told that the British, Australians and French had to be over the border in 24 hours.  But the agreement of a route and assurance for the safe passage of staff in other cities took days to negotiate.  Eventually it was agreed that they should all leave on a special train on 10 November.

Sir Humphrey Trevelyan locked the Residence himself as he left that evening for the train which took them via Alexandria and Almein towards Libya.

Diplomatic relations were restored at Charge d’Affaires level in 1959, and at Ambassador level in 1961. They were broken again (over Rhodesia) in 1965 and restored once more in December 1967.  The workload must have continued to expand after that, because more office space was needed again, and by the 1970s Visa Section was moved  to the ballroom, which again had to be converted to offices. The Visa Section moved in 2004 to newly refurbished offices in the old stable block on the opposite side of the front lawn.  Work then started on a project to return the ballroom to its former glory.  This was completed in time for a reception to be held there in honour of HRH The Duke of York in November 2005.

Early incumbents of the Residence complained that the house was bleak.  In Kitchener’s time the now middle drawing room was referred to as ‘hideous’, crammed with his collection of china and Byzantine icons.  In Lord Lloyd’s time there were mustard coloured carpet squares in the hall and it was hung with nondescript velveteen curtains edged with little woolly balls. The ceilings were dark green and gold. There were also many complaints that the house should have faced the north to benefit from the cooling effects of the continuous breeze blowing southwards over the Nile.  A spiral staircase was added from the balcony outside the High Commissioner’s private rooms to allow him to get to his office without encountering the waiting visitors in the hall at the bottom of the main stairs.

There are no plans to move from the Residence and nothing can be done about the windows facing the afternoon sun, but recent Ambassadors have tried to make the house more welcoming with the use of paler paint and lighter furnishings with modern British fabrics.  The gardens have been reshaped and planted to reflect our horticultural history.  Dinners for 500 and receptions for 2000 can be held in the garden. Inside this versatile building, cocktail parties, small dinners, buffets, larger dinners, exhibitions in the billiard room, lectures in the dining room, concerts, accommodating the whole of the foreign secretary’s private office, TV interviews – all and more can be staged in pursuit of British interests.

The Residence Today

After entering the residence compound through the wrought iron gates, on each of which there is a crest of Queen Victoria, you will notice a tree on your right on the lawn.  This is an oak tree planted by Lord Cromer’s second wife Kathryn. Near it is a mulberry tree planted by the Prince of Wales & the Duchess of Cornwall one hundred years later. Either side of the entrance are the Kitchener marble lions mentioned in the text.

The windows above and around the front door were replaced as a Millennium 2000 project.  They include all the floral emblems of the British Isles (the Welsh emblem is missing in the Victorian crest on the gates), as well as those of Upper and Lower Egypt.  The windows were designed and made by an Egyptian Artist.

Most of the furniture (including the mirrors) in the house was made in the 19th and 20th century and many pieces are fine copies of earlier styles.  There is a wonderful collection of oriental carpets, most noteworthy of which is the magnificent Heriz ‘garden’ carpet in the main reception room.  The desk in the study is one that Lord Cromer and his successors used when this room was the office.

The alabaster canopic jars in the main reception rooms were left for safe keeping by a British Jew from Alexandria.  They are probably 26th Dynasty and were originally to remain in the house until they were given to the British Museum.  The large modern picture in the same room is by Bridget Riley who, after a visit to Egypt, started using colour in her work where before she had only used black and white.  In the main reception room there is also a sculpture in Egyptian stone by Stephen Cox.

There are four water colour paintings by Edward Lear in the small dining room.  Lord Cromer’s portrait hangs in the study.  When it was shown at the Royal Academy it provoked outrage because it portrayed one of Britain’s leading imperial figures in a thoroughly unimperial pose (in contrast with the portrait of Kitchener on the opposite wall).

The ball room Kitchener built beside the Residence, which was used for many years as offices, has recently been restored for use as a function and meeting room.
   
The research into this short history of the British Ambassador’s residence in Cairo was done by Janet Boyce, and is taken from her booklet “Bayt Al Lurd” published in July 2001.  The text has been edited for reasons of space, and updated to take account of recent developments.